Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/228

196 "Nay, that side of my nature which is vainglorious and not indifferent to praise (for it is well to know one's own faults), is affected with a certain satisfaction. For the thought used to vex me that possibly, six hundred years hence, the services of our Great Bashaw to the nation might appear more eminent than my own; now I am relieved from any such anxiety." Each reader will judge of these utterances according as his own temperament prompts. To me it seems difficult to regard very sternly, or to take as a matter for very serious condemnation, a weakness so frankly and simply displayed. Cicero's vanity and love of praise make him less dignified, but they hardly make him less lovable.

We have still to consider a few points connected with Cicero's private life at this period. In the year after his consulship he bought from Crassus a magnificent house on the Palatine, and borrowed money freely from his friends for the purpose. His burden sat very lightly on him, and it seemed a capital joke that he who had so sternly resisted schemes of national bankruptcy should now be qualified to enlist under another Catiline. "You must know," he says, "that I am so deep in debt that I should be quite inclined to join in a conspiracy, if any one would have me; but they all fight shy of me."

We hear little of Cicero's wife and children at this time, but much of his brother Quintus. Quintus was prætor in the year 61 B.C., and it was at his bar that Cicero delivered the speech for Archias. Towards